impossible discs
This article, the first of a projected series of
three, surveys part of the Opera Queen's beloved
Land of It-Might-Have- Been. I submit for your
fascination a selective account of how the best-laid
plans of the recording studios have often not followed
the courses originally envisioned for them. Recalling
tidbits from magazines like High Fidelity and
Gramophone, diva bios, books like Ring
Resounding, and, of course, the usual rumor mill
(our second-favorite oral tradition), I shall reveal
casting choices which were planned or promised for
major recordings but never came to pass.
Now, proposals like a Fischer-Dieskau Siegmund, a
Caballe Abigaille or a Freni Turandot, which the
artists may have considered for a moment but generally
were to reject in short order (leaving us with, in
descending order of felicity, James King, Ghena
Dimitrova and Katia Ricciarelli), are not the order of
the day here. Though I can in many cases cite which
issue of Opera News or which chapter of Demented
gave me the information I provide, some of what I offer
here has been passed along less formally; moreover,
even some of the stuff in print may be less than
trustworthy (the pipe dream issue again), and in any
case this topic is by its nature fairly subjective. I
hope to hear from parterre box readers
which tasty items I have missed and which details you
feel should be clarified ...
A third article in this series will, among other
things, discuss complete opera sets which were planned,
begun or even completed without ever (as of this
writing) seeing release. (The Sutherland/Pavarotti
Ernani Decca just issued over a DECADE after being
recorded would have been a prime candidate here, but
never fear! -- there are many others like it.) For the
first two, however, I shall focus on casting changes,
dreaming of the day I write a similar study about the
Silver Screen. (Did you know that Mandy Patinkin was
fired from Mike Nichols' Heartburn after one
day's shoot, to be replaced by Jack Nicholson? or
that Miss Joan Crawford was originally signed for
From Here to Eternity, only to be passed over when
she pushed too hard in salary negotiations? But
that's another article ...)
THOSE THREE TENORS
Before they were busting a gut or ten in
their overblown stadium appearances, sometimes it seems
like these gentlemen have spent nearly as much time
giving up (or being fired from) studio recordings, only
to be replaced by others. To be fair, Placido Domingo
(here as elsewhere), actually comes off as Mr. Nice Guy
a few times, rescuing the second Scotto
Butterfly when Giacomo Aragall dropped and, quite
late in the gameNeil Shicoff cancelled (or was it the
other way round?). Not his best recording, but he flew
in on something like 24 hours' notice, so cut him
some slack! Similarly, the Bernstein Messa da
requiem, recorded for both audio and video, was one
of the young Domingo's many appearances as a
substitute for Franco Corelli: he did this many times
onstage, but this is the only recording I know which he
took for an indisposed or unwilling Franco. (Carlo
Bergonzi did the same on the Gardelli Forza, and
I for one am thrilled he did.)
The Solti Carmen, though originally planned
with Domingo, was almost a Pavarotti role debut, since
Decca unsurprisingly wanted to feature their exclusive
artist. Of a different nature was another
Domingo-for-Pavarotti substution: the soundtrack of the
Ponnelle Butterfly film, which was otherwise
identical to the Decca CDs. (Mr. Domingo brushes over
this snub gracefully in his memoir, but I guess we now
know why that Salzburg Trovatore was the last
Pavarotti-Karajan collaboration ...)
But Mr. Domingo's cancellations or disappearances
from recording plans are memorable too. Sometimes he
performed a role "live" but wouldn't or
couldn't show up for the recording -- Percy on the
Varviso Anna Bolena, for instance (which the
late John Alexander very memorably graced, as
Decca's recent CD reissue reminds us) --, but more
often he never recorded a part he promised over and
over to learn especially for records: Bacchus in
Ariadne (which Karl Boehm wanted for his DG set and
James Levine thought he had in the bank for his; Jess
Thomas and Gary Lakes made the recordings) and Waldemar
in Gurre-Lieder (holding Chailly's Decca
recording up for some time, until Siegfried Jerusalem
finally stepped in). The tragic saga of the Solti
Tristan remake, which I shall tell in a future installment, long had a hemming-and-hawing Domingo attached as Tristan; any bets whether his projected Wagner recordings opposite Jane Eaglen for Sony (Tristan, plus all the big tenor parts in the Ring!) will come off?
One last Domingo departure -- from the
cancellation-prone DG West Side Story -- brings
us to Jose Carreras, who recorded the part after Neil
Shicoff and Francisco Araiza also proved unavailable.
(Jerry Hadley, who would have been ideal, was at the
time not considered enough of a "name"; any
word on the more recent recording he and the
perennially perky Dawn Upshaw were supposed to have
made? Other changes here involved Marilyn Horne,
originally considered for Anita, replacing Jessye
Norman in "Somewhere" (though Jessye later
recorded the solo anyway over Bernstein's
orchestral tracks!) and Tatiana Troyanos taking Anita.
I've even heard tell that Dame Kiri Te Kanawa was a
replacement Maria, but I have no idea for whom ...)
Mr. Carreras, whose illness delayed the Philips
La juive (which he eventually completed, more than
respectably), did not make his originally announced
appearance in the Mehta Traviata with Dame Kiri
and Dmitri Hvorostovsky; Alfredo Kraus, that soul of
youthful vigor who in better days had already graced
two recordings of the opera for EMI, was apparently the
only tenor anyone could find, and he thus enjoys the
unusual distinction of being the only Alfredo on disc
(or perhaps anywhere) nearly twice his
"father's" age.
As for Luciano Pavarotti, well, it turns
out he has been the best citizen of all when it comes
to actually making it through the recordings he has
signed for; no doubt this has something to do with his
being the most exclusively contracted of the Three. His
recordings may take a while to appear (Ernani,
the second Trovatore, maybe even the mysterious
third Rigoletto, recorded with the Met for DG),
but once announced, they do tend to surface eventually.
So I'll close this section with a weird coda: did
you know that Pavarotti was once announced to sing
Count Almaviva on the second Abbado/DG Barbiere?
As if the Domingo Figaro wasn't a weird enough idea
... Well, anyway, in the event the much-more-suitable
Frank Lopardo took the part, sounding tonally darker
than his (tenor) Figaro but making neat work of his
difficult arias. To continue for a moment with tenors
already mentioned: Another recording windfall came
Frank Lopardo's way when Vinson Cole proved to be
unavailable for the Solti Cosi remake. Neil
Shicoff disappeared not only from the Maazel
Butterfly discussed but also from the Rizzi
Faust (Jerry Hadley filled in) and the Haitink
Rosenkavalier (Richard Leech deputized). In both
cases, I'm rather glad of the replacements.
Franco Corelli's withdrawal from the
Gardelli Forza meant he was declining his second
chance to record that opera commercially, as he had
already yielded the Schippers set to Richard Tucker.
Mr. Tucker was therefore recording that opera for the
second, better time; compare how personal problems
and/or disagreements (details vary depending upon whom
one asks) saw Jussi Bjoerling withdraw from Solti's
first Ballo recording even though taping had begun;
Carlo Bergonzi replaced him and, as Domingo later
would, ended up recording the whole opera twice within
six years. As with Tucker's two Forza sets,
separated by a decade, the second is preferable in just
about every respect. Sadly, this was the second
Ballo recording Mr. Bjoerling should have graced
but did not, as the Toscanini set was also originally
intended for him. (Jan Peerce was the substitute in
that case.) Mr. Corelli also was meant for the von
Matacic Fanciulla, which must be among the most
recast sets, what with Birgit Nilsson filling in for
Maria Callas, Joao Gibin replacing Corelli and Andrea
Mongelli subbing for Tito Gobbi! Only three other opera
sets come to mind as having had so many changes: the
Beecham Zauberfloete (which saw Richard Tauber,
Herbert Janssen and Alexander Kipnis replaced by Helge
Roswaenge, Walter Grossmann and Wilhelm Strienz), the
first Solti Meistersinger (which lost Gundula
Janowitz, Alberto Remedios, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
and Karl Ridderbusch for Hannelore Bode (did ever
Evchen deserve two recordings less?), Rene Kollo, Bernd
Weikl and Norman Bailey) and the Serafin Otello
(see the end of this section).
Casting the tenor parts in Wagner opera recordings
has always been a problem, of course. The most famous
example must be poor Ernst Kozub, in whom the gap
between natural vocal endowment and depth of artistry
was, it seems, staggeringly broad. Try though they
might, Solti and the Decca engineers could not coax a
respectable Siegfried out of him, despite all the time
and effort expended in the effort. In the end, they
persuaded him to let them dissolve his contract, and
Wolfgang Windgassen replaced him on both
Siegfried and (later)
Goetterdaemmerung.
Less well- known, perhaps, is the story of how history
seemed to be repeating itself with the Levine
Ring decades later. Levine and Haitink were both
circling for a viable Siegfried, and here timing proved
to be everything: Siegfried Jerusalem's decision to
assume the part at Bayreuth coincided better with
EMI's recording plans than DG's since the
latter company was going ahead with Siegfried
and Goetterdaemmerung earlier. DG had hoped to
use Peter Hofmann, but by 1987 that just wasn't
viable, so Reiner Goldberg, more respectable, less
viscerally thrilling but at least never embarrassing as
Siegfried, made the recordings. At least the Met got to
use Mr. Jerusalem as their video Siegfried.
Three other replacements bear mention before we
survey the lower-voiced men. Fritz Wunderlich's
untimely death brought Peter Schreier to the first
Boehm/DG Don Giovanni (an unhappy recording all
round, in the event). More pleasantly, Michael
Sylvester was replaced on the Conlon Oberon by
Ben Heppner. And most curiously, the reason a young Jon
Vickers was asked to record Otello with Tullio
Serafin even though he had yet to assume the part
onstage was because the original project -- a Fritz
Reiner Otello with Jussi Bjoerling (who would
have likewise been making his role debut) and Victoria
de los Angeles -- had all but evaporated. (Leonie
Rysanek, who would disappear from other RCA Verdi
recordings around that time, sang Desdemona.)
I have comparatively little detail about
cancellations involving baritones and basses. Do they
tend to be less temperamental, or is my own diva
fixation preventing me from remembering stories about
these gentlemen? I leave the matter for you to judge!
In any case, the first of our two cancelling basses is
Samuel Ramey, with two stories to his credit. First,
though he was once mentioned as a participant in the
aforementioned Bonynge Ernani, the recording
came out with ... Paata Burchuladze. More recently, he
withdrew from the Abbado Figaro (which would
have offered his first-ever Count Almaviva) and was
hastily replaced with Boje Skovhus, who ended up
contributing one of the few selling points of this
disappointing recording.
That leaves our other bass as Nicolai Ghiaurov, who
(rumor has it) showed up drunk for the Maazel Luisa
Miller sessions, fell over a music stand and was
replaced immediately. Like Carlo Bergonzi in
Ballo and Richard Tucker in Forza, Bryn
Terfel happened upon one of his two Salome
recordings as a replacement: the Sinopoli was
originally slated for Ekkehard Wlaschiha, so he (like
Jon Vickers' first Otello) learned the part of
Jokanaan especially for the first recording but
benefited from stage experience in making his second.
(Like Vickers, he's fresher and more
straightforward on the first.) Matteo Manuguerra's
fine performance as Nabucco for Riccardo Muti came when
neither Piero Cappuccilli nor Sherrill Milnes, both
associated with the project, proved unavailable.
I already mentioned how Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau did not record Meistersinger
with Solti; his Hans Sachs, an assumption for records
only, was conducted by Eugen Jochum. Later, he turned
down what might have been the perfect stage role for
him -- Beckmesser -- when the Sawallisch recording was
made; Siegfried Lorenz took it. He did, however,
deputize on the ill-starred Gardelli Macbeth,
which most people (including her, no doubt) remember as
an Elena Suliotis nightmare; Tito Gobbi and Sherrill
Milnes were both mentioned in connection with this
recording, but though the veteran Gobbi had signed for
it, he was too ill to perform, so Fischer-Dieskau went
on in his place. Those of you who treasure this album
for Luciano Pavarotti's for-records-only Macduff
should thank Mr. Fischer-Dieskau, who stood at the
tenor's side and cued his every entrance.
All the diva stories you could want along
these lines, including at least five Caballe
replacements and three each for Rysanek and Stratas!
(And in the third installment, revealed at last: what
ever happened to that Giulini/DG Traviata with Rosalind
Plowright?) -- in part two.
Ortrud Maxwell
This article originally appeared in parterre box, the queer opera
zine.
|